Sarah Palin, comedienne.

On the "Today" show today. You have to watch a John Deere commercial to get to the short bit in the clip at the link, but it's quite funny, showing Palin "doing her homework." She's reading all the newspapers. You remember when Katie Couric asked her what newspapers she read — specifically — and she said she read "all of 'em, any of 'em that have been in front of me over all these years."

"And yeah, I hear that she wants to now engage in more multidimensional storytelling."

"Versus, I guess, just the straight-on reading-into-that-teleprompter-screen storytelling. So more power to her. I wish her well with her multidimensional storytelling."

Sarah Palin mocks her nemesis Katie Couric.

Multidimensional storytelling is an expression that lends itself to comic riffing. Palin's jab isn't particularly clever. It's mainly just the sarcastic repeating of Couric's own term. How did the term "storytelling" catch on over the last quarter century as a positive way to talk about narration of real-world events? If I remember correctly, before about 1980, the term "storytelling" mainly referred to fiction or lying.

There was a real fad in the legal academy for writing and pontificating about "telling stories" about this or that aspect of law, and it was meant in a positive way. I hate to pick on an individual lawprof, but here's an example of what I'm talking about from a recent law review article:

Narratives matter, place matters, and care's embrace of storytelling situates law in a more robust dialogue on the allocation of rights to controlling our surroundings.

Like most law review article sentences, it has a footnote:

Ecofeminist literature often portrays the ethic of care through the use of narrative, telling stories of human and nature interactions, in which nature is approached not as a challenge or commodity, but as a partner or collaborator. Ecofeminist stories describe nature from the perspective of a loving eye instead of from arrogant perception - not as something to dominate and conquer, but as a participant in an experience. Karen Warren illustrates why ecofeminism relies on the power of narrative to undermine the patriarchal biases in rights rhetoric. Warren’s story invites the reader to the tension between the climber and a large rock edifice. Through her story, Warren is able to evaluate the process by which she reconsiders the goals of rock climbing, from which she arrives at an understanding of her relationship to this rock feature in which the two are engaged in one another as “silent conversational partners in a longstanding friendship.” [Karen J. Warren, The Power and Promise of Ecological Feminism, 12 ENV. ETHICS 125, 134 (1990).] Narrative enables the expression of interests and behaviors that may be misunderstood, undermined or excluded in dominant rhetoric. By rejecting the restraints of dominant vocabularies, narrative offers “a way of conceiving of ethics and ethical meaning as emerging out of particular situations moral agents find themselves in, rather than as being imposed on those situations (e.g. as a derivation or instantiation of some predetermined abstract principle or rule.” Id., at 136.

Whether Couric was ever steeped in this kind of scholarship, I don't know.

"It’s interesting to watch Katie Couric drop her pretense of impartiality..."

"... as with JournoList, it’s nice to have solid confirmation of what we’ve long suspected."

Oh, ridiculous. In private, who didn't have a laugh at the names of Sarah and Bristol Palin's kids? I bet the Palin family members themselves laugh about it. "Solid confirmation"?! Spare me.

Memo to CBS and Katie Couric: Release the unedited Palin video.

In "Going Rogue," Sarah Palin criticizes CBS for editing long interviews into the most damaging soundbites and making her look stupid and irritable. There's an easy solution: Release the unedited video. There is a lot of material in the book making assertions about all sorts of trenchant comments Palin supposedly made. Palin says she was asked the same questions over and over in an effort to elicit a bad answer. She says that some of her answers were clipped after some simple beginning and before she delved into details that would have made her look smart and knowledgeable. It would be very easy to check if we had all the video. Put it up on line.

TiVo-blogging Sarah Palin on "Oprah."

0:01 — Oprah is incredulous that Sarah Palin hadn't paid any attention — back during the campaign — to the talk about how Oprah had snubbed her. Palin was focused on the campaign. Oprah cannot believe it: "You didn't even know about it?!" — as if Palin is a complete ignoramus not to have been all Oprah-focused. "No offense to you, but it wasn't the center of my universe." Oprah looks away. Jeez. Does Oprah have self-esteem issues like Katie Couric? I'm going to give Oprah the benefit of the doubt and say she's trying to play Palin — stir up that female empathy. And either she'll rope in Palin or she'll somehow get the female audience thinking Oprah good, Palin bad.

0:03 — Palin looks great — youthful, glowing. I notice some obvious false hair stuck in on top. When she brings her hand up to her face, it's strangely light pink. I readjust and realize her face is heavily coated in bronze makeup. They're talking about how the news of Bristol's pregnancy emerged, and she complains that the McCain campaign sent out the message that the Palins were proud and happy to become grandparents, which wasn't the message she'd wanted at all. "Didn't you approve the message?" Oprah asks. No, she'd wanted to turn the news into an occasion to address the problem of teen pregnancy. Asked if she was "naive," she says she was naive to think the press would leave her kids alone. She notes that Obama had asserted that kids were off limits and, prompted by Oprah, indicates that was pretty nice of Obama.

0:13 — The McCain people got on her case about the Atkins Diet.

0:14 — The way the McCain people pushed clothes made her feel as though her whole family was starring in an episode of "What Not to Wear."

0:22 —  She thought the interview with Katie Couric would be fun and just "working mom talking with working mom." She concedes that if she were watching the Couric interview, as edited, she too would have thought she was unprepared and unqualified. She "knew it wasn't a good interview," but the McCain people thought it was fine.

0:25 — "Why didn't you just name some books and magazines?" Oprah asks (after showing the clip of Palin blabbering on about reading "all" of the books and magazines). Palin portrays herself as annoyed at Couric: It sounded like an insinuation that Palin, up in Alaska, couldn't possibly know what is going on, and she responded as if that had been the question. That is, she didn't realize how evasive — and dumb — it would sound that she would not get specific.

0:28 — "You're perky too," says Oprah when Palin calls Couric "perky."

0:29 — It took Palin 3 weeks to tell Todd that their unborn child had Down Syndrome. Todd didn't ask why us? He said why not us? That's about right.

0:33 — Everyone wants to hear about Levi Johnston, Oprah tells us. "It's kind of heartbreaking," Palin says, this "aspiring porn." "I call that porn." She wants to focus on her grandson and to think of Levi mainly as the baby's father. Oprah says, when Palin found out that Levi was badmouthing her to the press, "You had to be a little pissed." The audience applauds. "He's on a road that's not a healthy place to be. He's a teenager... He is loved..."

0:41 — "Sweat is my sanity." We see Sarah in shorts in a gym.

0:43 — "Very strong marriage" with Todd.  High school sweethearts. Long separations. Solid partnership where both do what needs to be done.

0:50 — "She's not retreating. She's reloading." Palin quotes her dad as she explains what it meant to step down from the governorship.

0:53 — Is she running for President? Oprah presses Palin as Palin wriggles out of the big question.

0:56 — "Oprah you are the queen of talk shows," Palin says, bowing twice with outstretched arms.

0:57 — "I get through the challenges that I do thanks to God and Todd."

SUMMARY: A pleasant chat. Not much substance. Both women seemed fine, such as it was. For the most part, Oprah pursued the traditional women's topics: pregnancy, children, marriage. Palin looked vividly alive and spoke quickly and without stumbles or hesitations. I don't think there was a single word about any serious policy question. It was mostly about how it felt to be Sarah Palin.

Sarah Palin is dumb.

By her own words, Sarah Palin is dumb. Here's the excerpt of pages 255-257 of "Going Rogue: An American Life":

By the third week in September, a “Free Sarah” campaign was under way and the press at large was growing increasingly critical of the McCain camp’s decision to keep me, my family and friends back home, and my governor’s staff all bottled up. Meanwhile, the question of which news outlet would land the first interview was a big deal, as it always is with a major party candidate.

From the beginning, Nicolle [Wallace] pushed for Katie Couric and the CBS Evening News. The campaign’s general strategy involved coming out with a network anchor, someone they felt had treated John well on the trail thus far. My suggestion was that we be consistent with that strategy and start talking to outlets like FOX and the Wall Street Journal. I really didn’t have a say in which press I was going to talk to, but for some reason Nicolle seemed compelled to get me on the Katie bandwagon.

Why didn't you have a say? There's that "really" hedging: You didn't really have a say. You're pleading passivity and impotence but you want us to think you have what it takes to be President of the United States?

“Katie really likes you,” she said to me one day. “she’s a working mom and admires you as a working mom. She has teenage daughter like you. She just relates to you,” Nicolle said. “believe me, I know her very well. I’ve worked with her.” 

It is inane to be swayed by this blather. Most of Palin's opponents would probably say the same sort of thing — or at least would have said the same thing at the time, back before any negative stories about her family had appeared. Isn't it lovely that Sarah Palin has a nice husband and kids and she has a great job too?

Women have been patted on the head like that for years. It does not express more profound respect. Indeed, it often betrays disrespect under the surface. If — back when my sons were children — someone had told me that he was impressed by my work as a law professor because I was a "working mom," I would have felt insulted. Perhaps he only meant well, but I would make a mental note to be suspicious of him. The famous Samuel Johnson quote would spring to mind: "Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."

If Sarah Palin did not see the limited value of Nicolle Wallace's comment about Katie Couric, then she is too pollyannaish and unsophisticated to be trusted with presidential power. Couric is a pussycat compared to the world leaders who will smile and exude pleasantries and then stab you in the back.

Nicolle had left her gig at CBS just a few months earlier to hook up with the McCain campaign. I had to trust her experience, as she had dealt with national politics more than I had.

Had to trust? Because of your limited experience? Who else would you trust? Wallace was pushing for her own former employer, CBS! Her recommendation of Couric had an element of self-interest and should have been discounted.

But something always struck me as peculiar about the way she recalled her days in the White House, when she was speaking on behalf of President George W. Bush. She didn't have much to say that was positive about her former boss or the job in general. Whenever I wanted to give a shout-out to the White House’s homeland security efforts after 9/11, we were told we couldn’t do it. I didn’t know if that was Nicolle’s call.

Why didn't you know? Why did you trust this person? Why do you now think it makes you look good to blame her for your traipse into the lioness's den?

Nicolle went on to explain that Katie really needed a career boost. “She just has such low self-esteem,” Nicolle said. She added that Katie was going through a tough time. “She just feels she can’t trust anybody.”

Katie has low self-esteem?! Bullshit! Anyone with the stuff to be President would have said bullshit. Or something like: Look, I'm running for Vice President. I can't be distracted by some TV diva's need for an emotional boost. Not unless I know it will translate into making me look great. But how would that work? Her boost is only likely to come if she makes me look terrible. Even if she has low self-esteem, #1, I don't care, it's hardly a pressing issue I need to be thinking about, and #2, that makes her more dangerous to me. She can't trust anybody? Well, I don't trust her. And Nicolle, how can you even present me with such an argument that is so specious on its face?

I was thinking, And this has to do with John McCain’s campaign how?

Nicolle said. “She wants you to like her.”

She wants me to like her or she wants America — especially the media elite — to like her? Come on, Nicolle, Katie Couric can't be that much of a sad sack. And if she is, I don't want to be seen with her.

Hearing all that, I almost started to feel sorry for her. Katie had tried to make a bold move from lively morning gal to serious anchor, but the new assignment wasn’t going very well.

You know who I feel sorry for? Kim Jong Il. I'm afraid he's lonely.

“You know what? We’ll schedule a segment with her,” Nicolle said. “If it doesn’t go well, if there’s no chemistry, we won’t do any others.”

Chemistry? What is this, a date — perhaps just a coffee, so that if you don't like her it will be over soon, and you won't need to see her again?

Meanwhile, the media blackout continued. It got so bad that a couple of times I had a friend in Anchorage track down phone numbers for me, and then I snuck in calls to folks like Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and someone I thought was Larry Kudlow but turned out to be Neil Cavuto’s producer.

She had trouble getting phone numbers? She "snuck" around, relying on friends? Like it's a Nancy Drew caper. And did she not see the downside of allowing right-winger to draw her out? That wasn't fair to McCain. McCain's people locked her down? Did she think carefully about their reasons? Does she think carefully about anything? Why did she agree to be McCain's running mate? She won't take responsibility for her own difficulties.

Apparently, they were afraid you were not ready, and they were right, so why didn't you trust them or at least accept that you owed them control over the presidential campaign? You agreed to take the subordinate position, and you had to know that their reasons for picking you had to do with image and style. If you weren't prepared to do it their way, you should not have accepted the part. At the very least, you should not have been mystified about the way they were treating you. You should have been looking at the campaign strategy from every angle and building your sophistication, not just aching to burst free and expose yourself to the world — which, as you soon learned, did not go well.

It seems that Sarah Palin wasn't able or didn't want to bother to analyze whether she was ready to debut on the big media stage, and she wasn't large-minded enough to think beyond herself to what it would mean for the whole campaign. That is, she was dumb. She was too dumb to handle campaign responsibilities properly, so she was clearly too dumb to step into the role of President of the United States.

Could she build up her political intelligence? Might she have it now or by 2012? If these 2 pages of  "Going Rogue" are any evidence, she is displaying her weaknesses all over again, and she is still too dumb to be President. And, most scarily, she doesn't know how dumb she still is.

"The McCain campaign dissed Sarah Palin, muffled her, and then stuck her with a $500,000* legal bill...."

"Mrs. Palin writes that the $500,000* was the legal bill for vetting her to be John McCain’s vice presidential nominee, according to the Associated Press, which purchased an early copy of the book. After the election, when she asked if the campaign would help her financially, Mrs. Palin says aides told her it would have been covered if the ticket won. Since they lost, it was her responsibility."

Other tidbits:

She says the campaign refused to let her rewrite the statement announcing her teenage daughter’s pregnancy, instead issuing remarks that Mrs. Palin thought glamorized the pregnancy....

She writes that she sat down with Katie Couric in part because she felt sorry for her, after Nicolle Wallace, a McCain aide, said Ms. Couric suffered from low self-esteem....

ADDED: An Oprah clip:


Watch CBS News Videos Online

* UPDATE: The NYT story, quoted and linked at the beginning of this post, has now knocked a zero off the number:

An earlier version of his post incorrectly said that Mrs. Palin accused the McCain camp of presenting her with a $500,000 legal bill, instead of the actual amount of $50,000.

"2 of the 3 broadcasts being anchored by women is nothing to sneeze at..."

Well, I'm sneezing because I think it means that the network news isn't important anymore. That's not progress in feminism. It's what is conventionally a symptom of anti-feminism: That women do something signifies that it isn't considered important.

"The President serves up a kind of combo platter tonight, a news conference and an address to the nation, as he continues his full-court press..."

Katie Couric dishes out an atrocious mixed metaphor.

***

I'll comment on that combo platter soon. I just caught the tail-end of my recording and need to go back to the beginning. Feel free to comment on the whole event here. I'll have more here soon.

ADDED: Here's the transcript. Sorry, I'm too tired to provide any commentary.

Here's the text of the health care bill.

Obama's address to Congress... the live-blog.

Watch the don't-call-it-the-State-of-the-Union with me.

8:00: How come there are already 43 comments? The thing hasn't started yet! I suppose you guys are really excited about this. Nancy Pelosi has her olive-green sweatshirt on. I've chosen CBS... Katie Couric is obviously reading from a script.

8:04: Ruth Bader Ginsburg! Among the living! Closeups. Cheers.

8:05: Michelle Obama. Sleeveless! Purple!

8:06: Hillary! Looking radiant. Rahm! He's hot.

8:11: It's O! Red striped tie. Super-short hair. He's kissing all the ladies. The CBS commentary is soooo lame. This is true bipartisanship... except to the extent that it isn't....

8:15: Oops! O spoke over Nancy. Is Chief Justice Roberts there in the audience laughing?

8:20: We have terrible economic problems, but we're going to solve them. To do that, we need to understand how we got here. Then he lists various reforms — like health care — that I think he'd be listing even if there were no economic crisis. I can't see the connection between his economic wish list and the crisis at hand.

8:25: The text of the speech. Great, now like Nancy Pelosi, I can read along. It would be cool if Nancy had her laptop up there and was live-blogging.

8:31: Damn those executives with their jets and fancy drapes! No drapes for you!

8:33: Screw Wall Street but I love small business. Just be small and I will love you.

8:34: "Slowly, but surely, confidence will return, and our economy will recover." There's no lilt of hope in that. Whatever happened to all the hope? This is leaden and lecture-y.

8:37: Which member of Congress is most obviously up past his bedtime? I'm going to say Charles Rangel.

8:40: "It will be the goal of this administration to ensure that every child has access to a complete and competitive education – from the day they are born to the day they begin a career." So... no child left behind?

8:51: Orrin Hatch's name is invoked. We see him reading the speech and grimacing at his own name. He is not a prideful man.

8:59: Obama supports the troops.

9:03: Now, he's in the generic inspiration, listing-of-the-heroes part. Some businessman handed out money because "I didn't feel right getting the money myself." See, rich folk? Cough it up.

9:08: "Some day years from now our children can tell their children that this was the time" — oh, he's doing "this was the time" again — "when we performed, in the words that are carved into this very chamber, 'something worthy to be remembered.'" That was a goofy crescendo. I mean, paraphrase it: In the future, we'll look back and say that we remember doing something.

9:09: "And God Bless the United States of America." He almost forgot to say it.

9:22: Waiting for Bobby Jindal.

9:24: "Happy Mardi Gras!" Bobby's all enthusiastic about Barack Obama, the first African-American President!

9:26: Bobby learned a can-do attitude from his immigrant dad. His emphatic hand gestures are not quite in the camera frame. But I think his style is pretty good, though it sounds super-rehearsed. Somebody taught him every inflection I think. And that eye contact. It's a bit unnerving!

9:29: Jindal is nicely upbeat and confidence-inspiring. Don't monitor volcanoes! Monitor the eruption of spending!

9:35: The GOP wants to win back our trust.

9:37: Bobby: plastic and peppy. But maybe we'll get used to him.

Sarah Palin: "Is it political? Is it sexism? What is it that drives someone to believe the worst and perpetuate the worst ... gossip and lies?"

Reflecting on the way she was treated by old and new media:



ADDED QUOTE: "The grizzly rises up in me, hearin' things like that."

AND: I'm told she says "The mama grizzly rises up in me, hearin' things like that." I'll take your word for it, rather than listen again. I also see, from Gawker, that the filmmaker, the interviewer in the clip, is John Ziegler, who was the radio talk-show guy that David Foster Wallace wrote about in "Host."

You can read the DFW. Excerpt:

John Ziegler, who is a talk-radio host of unflagging industry, broad general knowledge, mordant wit, and extreme conviction, makes a particular specialty of media criticism. One object of his disgust and contempt in the churn so far has been the U.S. networks' spineless, patronizing decision not to air the Berg videotape and thus to deny Americans "a true and accurate view of the barbarity, the utter depravity, of these people." Even more outrageous, to Mr. Z., is the mainstream media's lack of outrage about Berg's taped murder versus all that same media's hand-wringing and invective over the recent photos of alleged prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison, which he views as a clear indication of the deluded, blame-America-first mentality of the U.S. press. It is an associated contrast between Americans' mortified response to the Abu Ghraib photos and reports of the Arab world's phlegmatic reaction to the Berg video that leads to his churn's climax, which is that we are plainly, unambiguously better than the Arab world...

Depending on one's politics, sensitivities, and tastes in argumentation, it is not hard to think of objections to John Ziegler's climactic claim, or at least of some urgent requests for clarification. Like: Exactly what and whom does "the Arab world" refer to? And why are a few editorials and man-on-the-street interviews sufficient to represent the attitude and character of a whole diverse region? And why is al-Jazeera's showing of the Berg video so awful if Mr. Z. has just castigated the U.S. networks for not showing it? Plus, of course, what is "better" supposed to mean here? More moral? More diffident about our immorality? Is it not, in our own history, pretty easy to name some Berg-level atrocities committed by U.S. nationals, or agencies, or even governments, and approved by much of our populace? Or perhaps this: Leaving aside whether John Ziegler's assertions are true or coherent, is it even remotely helpful or productive to make huge, sweeping claims about some other region's/culture's inferiority to us? What possible effect can such remarks have except to incite hatred? Aren't they sort of irresponsible?

"So, Letterman like Palin blows Katie Couric interview too."

"Turns out old Dave got so focused on making fun of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin that he forgot to ask Couric about how Republican presidential candidate John McCain happened to be on Katie's news show, choosing to stand up Letterman's guest invite at the last minute earlier in the fall."



(Via Instapundit.)

How McCain lost me.

As promised, I'm mining my archive -- beginning in late August -- to try to understand how I turned against John McCain.

August 25: "Nicely done. I'm glad to see the return of the light touch," I say about an Obama ad that uses the song "What a Wonderful World" -- "don't know much about..." -- to highlight McCain's statement "The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should."

August 28, 7:11 AM: Wondering if McCain would pick Lieberman as his VP, I wrote: "... I've got to say that I kind of love Lieberman. He's just about exactly where I am on most things. Why should I fret about what evangelicals and staunch conservatives think? It would suit me just fine! It will wreak havoc with my cruel neutrality." I'd taken a vow to remain neutral (cruelly neutral) until at least October, and this little outburst shows that the choice of Lieberman would have come close to clinching my vote.

August 28, 7:48 AM: I'm struck by a McCain ad that uses an old Obama quote: "You know, I am a believer in … in knowing what you’re doing when you apply for a job. Uh, and I think that if I were seriously to consider running on a national ticket, I would essentially have to start now, before having served a day in the Senate. Now there may be some people who are comfortable doing that, but I am not one of those people." McCain's experience argument was working.

August 29: McCain picks Sarah Palin, and I'm live-blogging the roll-out of the news. When I hear that it will be a woman "a chill ran through my body when I heard that, and I have broken a sob or two as I write this." When I hear the news that it will be Sarah Palin, I write: "Tears! Chills!!!!" I fret that "she is inexperienced" and note that will cancel out the argument that Obama is inexperienced (the very argument that had worked on me the previous day). I note that people will try to catch her sounding inexperienced. "I haven't heard her enough to have any idea whether she has the nerve and the mental capacity to sound right all the time." The live-blogging continues in a second post, and I'm excited by pictures of the family and details about her family. I love her speech -- "amazingly clear and strong, passionate and devoid of any hesitation or filler 'uhs.'" "Wow! Great performance! Fabulous first walk onto the national stage!" Bold-face in the original.

September 2: The second night of the Republican Convention. (Hey, remember Hurricane Gustav?!) "Wolf Blitzer is pushing the meme -- which I've heard elsewhere -- that McCain is a 'maverick' and that means he makes impulsive decisions like the choice of Sarah Palin. He doesn't add -- but there are versions of this meme where it is added -- that this supposedly gut level choice of Sarah Palin should stand as a warning about the way he will make decisions about foreign policy." I had bought the old "experience" theme. I was not buying the "maverick." But the "experience" theme is still being sung by Fred Thompson ("Obama is 'history-making' all right: he's the most inexperienced, left-wing candidate the Democrats have ever run -- says Thompson.") and Joe Lieberman ("Eloquence is no substitute for a record").

September 4: I react to McCain's convention speech. "The speech felt very long and had its ups and downs.... Ah, why is a speech important? The big idea is John McCain's life, and somewhere along the way tonight that point was made. It was made over and over. It's now for us to decide if we want this man to lead us for the next 4 years."

September 7: "We should be able to deliver bottled hot water to dehydrated babies." Nothing made me laugh more all year that the way I laughed on September 7th at the third video at the link. That might have jarred something free from my clotted thoughts: McCain is incoherent!

September 13: I'm impressed by an anti-McCain ad:

The ad begins with the can't-use-email mockery but switches to McCain's really serious cluelessness problem: McCain has said he doesn't understand much about economics. These 2 things taken together mainly convey the message: McCain is old. McCain's age is also a serious problem, and Obama is justified in massaging our doubts about it, but there's an odd disproportion between the not being able to use email and not understanding economics.

September 18: John McCain gets confused talking about world leaders, and I'm inclined to defend him. If I've got my doubts about his mental acuity, I'm fighting them.

September 19: I poll readers about my neutrality, and most of you think I'll be voting for McCain.

September 21: I enjoy an "SNL" skit -- written by Al Franken -- that bashes McCain (for being willing to say anything to win).

September 24: McCain suspends his campaign -- and threatens to skip the first debate -- because of the financial crisis. My first response was "This is, I think, a smart demonstration of leadership." Was I rooting for McCain? Maybe I was just rooting for a solution to the crisis, which had come to seem much more important that than which man got the presidency. But it's the update that says so much here:

Obama says that "there are times for politics and there are times to rise above politics and do what’s right," but now is not the time to cancel the debate. "This is exactly the time when people need to hear from the candidates." And: "Part of the president’s job is to deal with more than one thing at once. In my mind it’s more important than ever."

I suppose Obama couldn't very well follow McCain's lead. In fact, if McCain had really been serious about this, he should have worked it out with Obama in private, so that the two men could make a joint announcement. McCain went for political theatrics, and I guess he can use it against Obama now, which was probably the point, but Obama's reaction was so predictable that McCain's show of statesmanship was entirely bogus, so I will be impervious to that rhetoric.

After hearing from Obama, I view McCain as having pulled a stunt, a stunt that he should have seen would be ineffective.

September 25: I find Palin's interview with Katie Couric "Painful. Terrible." Yet McCain wants the VP debate to go first. She's not ready, and he's throwing out impulsive, erratic ideas.

September 25, a little later: I'm impressed by Mickey Kaus's mockery of McCain's stunt.

September 26: More criticism of McCain's campaign-suspension stunt:

Why did McCain arrive [in Congress] showily, as if he was the man to close the deal, and then not do anything? Has McCain said one word about whether he thinks now is the time to build a bulwark against socialism?

The House Republicans were going on about "socialism."

And can John McCain explain why government insurance as opposed to government asset-purchasing is the key to saving us from socialism?

Unless McCain talks about some of these things, I don't see the point of his swooping onto the scene to be the leader. Was he just betting that it would look good? But why should he have counted on Democrats allowing him to look good? And, insanely, it seems that Republicans have undercut him.

Belatedly, he must realize that it would have been better to take a low profile and let his congressional colleagues steer their deal to a conclusion -- which is what Barack Obama did.

And then there's the debate. Obama will be there, winning by forfeiture, unless McCain's ultimatum -- he can't debate unless the deal is closed -- was a bluff.

September 26: Once again Mickey Kaus expresses what I've been thinking. (And in the end, Mickey, like me, votes for Obama.) Later that day, I take another poll, and you people still think I'll end up voting for McCain.

September 26, evening: The first debate. The financial crisis dominates. McCain starts off with 2 problems I think are beside the point: 1. greed, 2. earmarks. McCain accidentally says he wasn't elected Miss Congeniality in the Senate a second time. Nevertheless, I conclude: "McCain made more good points and got in more punches," based on all the discussion of the war and foreign policy. But the opening part about economics hurt McCain and would continue to hurt him as the crisis remained the overwhelmingly important issue in the campaign.

October 7: Hmmm... a long gap since the last notable McCain post. I was probably feeling bad about his competence -- and about the financial crisis -- and declining to talk about it. Now, it's the "town hall" debate, and of course, I live-blog as usual:

McCain sounds a little shaky and winded...

McCain points to his record, and repeatedly tells us he's reached across the aisle....

Again with the earmarks. What was the dollar figure on earmarks? I heard $1 billion. That seems like nothing compared to the $750 billion bailout....

McCain's plan seems to be to sound passionate and caring. And to say "Lieberman" frequently....

I was just admiring Obama's elegant gestures with his long, thin hands, when McCain positioned himself in the background and made a hand gesture that can only be described as holding an invisible grapefruit in front of your chest....

Obama seems relaxed and smiling but also oddly pissed that McCain has been "throwing a lot of things out there."

Get the picture? McCain is erratic.

October 8: The morning after the debate, my attitude shifts:

It's October now, so I can say I kept my vow. It's not the vow keeping me neutral anymore. I don't like deciding, especially between 2 men I've long viewed as dangerously inadequate. The tumultuous financial crisis reminds me why I prefer to wait until the end: We get a better idea of what problems will plague the new President.

It is the response to the present crisis that mattered most last night, and the candidates tiresomely repeated old talking points. McCain kept trying to stoke outrage over earmarks, and Obama continued to lecture us about conserving energy. They clung to their old pet solutions when we are staring at a huge new -- I mean, newly perceived -- problem. Are they so utterly lacking in creativity and flexibility that they cannot offer us anything new in the face of dramatically changed circumstances? Or are they both just determined to play it safe and say nothing in these last few weeks that can be spun against them?

The first half hour of the debate was excruciating, with question after question about the crisis. The candidates' evasions were mind-numbing, and, despite my commitment to live-blogging, I had no words, not even little idle comments. I nearly gave up.

But this morning, I decided to make an effort to say which man had done the better job. It was Barack Obama. And I'm not saying this just because I admired his relaxed demeanor and youthful image and felt uneasy about the older man's jerky movements and desperate grimaces. I'm saying it because I am inclined to think that with the development of complex securities and the pursuit of profit along the edge of disaster, the free market failed spectacularly. When we need new regulation, Obama effectively associated McCain with his party's love of deregulation.

McCain offered no defense of his party, only assertions that he had tried to get regulations passed. So, there he was, embedded in failure. He didn't stand by the principles of conservatism...

Look at how McCain failed to promote conservatism. McCain brought up Ronald Reagan 3 times: once to say he opposed him about sending troops to Lebanon and the other 2 times to say it was wonderful the way he worked with the liberal Tip O'Neill.

McCain never presented the conservative alternative to Obama. He never even called himself a conservative last night. He was wandering all over that red carpet, microphone in hand, and I have the feeling, in retrospect, that he was truly bewildered, mouthing old phrases, trying to slip by. But one old phrase that was missing was "I'm a proud conservative." Remember when he used to say that?...

McCain has lost definition. He's stumbling along to the finish line, hoping to achieve his lifelong ambition, to seize the crown at last. But why? To show he can get along with Democrats? I worry about what awful innovations the new President will concoct in league with the Democratic Congress, but at this point, I'm more worried about McCain than Obama.

This is not a commitment to vote for Obama, and I'm still going to provide the service of observing events from my slouchily neutral posture, to which no vow currently binds me. But you see the trend, and the destination is almost inevitable.

ADDED: I should have paid more attention to this. I heard it last night, but couldn't understand how it would deal with the crisis. It seems like a massive government benefit going out to people who overextended themselves taking loans. Why not give money to all the frugal people who believed they couldn't afford to buy a house? I don't understand the theory, other than as political pandering.

So this was the crucial tipping point. Dear readers, it was right there, the morning after the Town Hall debate.

October 8: "Nope, too slow. Touch her." Humor drives home my perception of McCain as an erratic old man.

October 10: Christopher Buckley has some influence, especially the phrase "his positions change, and lack coherence."

October 13: Christopher Hitchens has even more influence: "John McCain [seems] to be someone suffering from an increasingly obvious and embarrassing deficit, both cognitive and physical." Yeah, that's what I'd been thinking. Exactly.

October 15: : My advice to McCain: "Act the way you would act if you knew for certain that you would lose... I think he should be the upright and honorable man that he wants us to be remembered as. This isn't a devious ploy to make him give up. I think it's the best hope for getting us bond with him now."

October 15, evening: I live-blog the last debate. "McCain plugs in prepared material about Joe the plumber who is worried about taxes.... McCain is wooden and overprepared, unwilling to react on the spot.... McCain mugs when it's not his turn.... McCain sounds over-rehearsed and he stumbles over many things. He says "abased" for "based." I think he knows he hasn't done enough tonight. He hasn't rattled Obama, not enough anyway...."

October 16: This still makes me laugh hysterically.

October 16, later: It bothers me tremendously that McCain hasn't defined himself as conservative.

Is there some sort of idea that if you think McCain is too liberal, you still have to vote for him, because if he's too liberal, then Obama is really too liberal? I don't buy that. Better a principled, coherent liberal whose liberal choices will, if they don't go well, be blamed on liberals than an erratic, incoherent liberal whose liberal choices will be blamed on the party that ought to get its conservative act together.

October 26: McCain appeared on "Meet the Press," and I thought he sounded "exhausted or sick."

Whenever he found the chance, he would stress that Barack Obama has a far-left ideology, and whenever he needed a different argument -- such as when Brokaw confronted him with his own statements in favor of making the rich pay more taxes -- he would resort to the argument that different times require different solutions. How can you use these two rhetorical strategies alternately? It's incoherent.

Again: incoherent. At the link, I dissect the MTP transcript to demonstrate my point.

October 30: I come to terms with the problem of 1-party government:

Usually, I prefer divided government, but that doesn't mean I need to support McCain. I've seen McCain put way too much effort into pleasing Democrats and flouting his own party, and I can picture Obama standing up to the Democratic Congress and being his own man. What, really, will he owe them? McCain, by contrast, will need them. And we've seen that he wants to be loved by them.

Sometimes, I think that letting the Democrats control everything for 2 years would work out just fine. Let one party take responsibility for everything. When they can't whine and finger-point, what will they actually step up and do? It will be interesting to know. And it will do the Republicans good to retool and define themselves, with an eye toward the 2010 election. I'd like to see this clarification after so many years of obfuscation.

This goes along with my problem that McCain had abandoned the effort to define himself as conservative. I could see myself voting for a conservative. I would like some good conservatism. But I did not see it in McCain. Certainly, just bringing in Palin was no substitute for having his own clear principles.

October 30, later that day: I agree with The Economist: "on the great issue of the campaign, the financial crisis, he has seemed all at sea, emitting panic and indecision."

October 31: A dream reveals my emotional picture of McCain: an angry old man who is not interested in rational debate.

November 3: "One thing I don't like about John McCain is that he never showed respect for Bush. He was all about distancing himself from Bush, but if it's distance you want from Bush, there's Obama. And Obama had no reason to defend the other party's President, but for all his criticism of Bush's policies, I don't remember Obama taking ugly potshots at Bush. McCain treated Bush like an outcast. Was there even a word of defense for the man who protected us from terrorist attacks for 7 years?"

***

How did McCain lose me?

1. He did not understand economics, the most important issue.

2. He lost the ability to make the experience argument.

3. He never defined himself as a principled conservative.

4. Erratic and incoherent, he lacked sufficient mental capacity.

Tom Cruise roasts Matt Lauer.

So Matt Lauer got one of those Friars Club roasts, and you wouldn't care -- would you? -- but Tom Cruise showed his adorable face, and he was hysterically funny:

"You know, I was just taking his advice. He told me, 'Nobody wants to hear about your dopey movie. Go crazy. People will love you for it.'

"Matt's great at giving advice. When Katie asked him if she should leave the 'Today' show for CBS, he said, 'Absolutely, you should definitely do that. People will love you for it.'

"Jay Leno was No. 1, but Matt told [NBC exec] Jeff Zucker to cut his contract. 'You'll be ahead of the curve before his ratings go down and you'll look like a genius. People will love you for it.' Leno's ratings never went down.

"A few months ago, he was talking to O.J. Simpson and he said, 'Juice, those guys in Vegas have all your stuff. Don't be a p---y, just go there and take it. Trust me, Juice. People will love you for it.'"...

"Matt and I are so close now, that if we can't be together, we talk on the phone three, four times a day. I'll call him up and ask, 'Are you watching this?' And he'll just say 'yeah,' and we'll watch the whole show together on the phone."

More here:

Cruise ended with a toast: "To our friend who we wake up to every morning only because we had the channel on NBC before we fell asleep." He then told Lauer, "Lose my number, you glib putz." And then signed off by finally saying, "Cruise out!" which was kind of unspeakably awesome. Lauer jumped up to the mike: "Tom, can you stay? We can get a booster seat."

Later, Lauer explained that he'd never been prepared for what a sensation the infamous 2005 interview would be, until he went home, "and someone told me what the word glib actually means. That burned my fucking ass!" Lauer also announced that he and Cruise have an interview scheduled for December. "So officially we have now buried the hatchet," he said. "But just between us, if he pulls that shit again, I will fuck him up. The guy is, like, five-foot-three. I will drop a building on his ass."

Do you love it when Lauer talks dirty to Tom?

This needs to be on YouTube, but it's not, so let's go back to Tom's wonderful old performance on "The Today Show" -- which will help you if you've lost track of the "glib" reference:



Ah! That never gets old.

Obama says: "The more I'm in public, I don't even want to pick my nose."

LOL. He's answering Katie Couric's question why politicians risk everything by committing adultery. McCain is asked the question too in this clip, and it's interesting to see the similarities and differences between the 2 candidates:



The most fascinating thing to me in this clip is -- can you guess? -- the way Obama moves his mouth in silent words at 0:46. I've never seen him do that. That's a completely new mannerism for him as he answers a question that is far from any question I've seen him try to answer before. In context, it seems to show him trying to get to the right answer, as if it needs a little rehearsal, which is striking since the answer he arrives at through this lip-fumbling is that he wants to be, truly, the person he seems to be: "that there's no gap between who I am and the face that I'm presenting in the world."

To compare the 2 candidates: Both refrain from explaining why other politicians do what they do, and both reflect on their own behavior. Obviously, the 2 men are differently situated, since we know that McCain committed adultery. (Long ago, but still.) McCain stresses the Biblical admonition: "Judge not." (The full text is:"Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.")

Obama stresses his personal effort to achieve integrity. Obama's answer is more articulate, more deeply touching. I like the way we can see him thinking, formulating values. McCain by contrast, takes refuge in the teachings of traditional morality. This is evidence -- take note! -- that in some very fundamental way Obama is a liberal and McCain is a conservative.

Oh, now look how serious I've gotten! My post title is now completely off. This happens a lot. I should change it. But for some reason, I do not.

Katie Couric invites viewers to admire the impressive constitutional expertise of Joe Biden.

Now, after analyzing the interview with Palin, I want to look at Katie Couric's interview with Joe Biden on the same subject, Roe v. Wade:

Katie Couric: Why do you think Roe v. Wade was a good decision?

Joe Biden: Because it's as close to a consensus that can exist in a society as heterogeneous as ours.

Since I noted Palin's garbled syntax, to be fair, I have to flag that garbled syntax.

What does it say? It says in the first three months that decision should be left to the woman. And the second three months, where Roe v. Wade says, well then the state, the government has a role, along with the women's health, they have a right to have some impact on that. And the third three months they say the weight of the government's input is on the fetus being carried.

And so that's sort of reflected as close as anybody is ever going to get in this heterogeneous, this multicultural society of religious people as to some sort of, not consensus, but as close it gets.

Questions! Questions! Katie, where are your questions?

Let me suggest a few: Why is that a consensus? And should the Supreme Court be serving up consensus and calling it constitutional law? If you say the case is good because it is consensus, then why would it not have been preferable to allow the democratic processes to play out and produce consensus? Why should courts impose consensus? And why are you praising the lines drawn in Roe, when the Court redrew the lines in Planned Parenthood v. Casey? "It says in the first three months that decision should be left to the woman"... ahem... that hasn't been the doctrine since 1992!

But Couric doesn't not break in and push Biden with any questions. He has free rein to make unchallenged statements. He is permitted to settle in and get comfortable and to rattle out his ideas in his own good time:

I think the liberty clause of the 14th Amendment … offers a right to privacy. Now that's one of the big debates that I have with my conservative scholar friends, that they say, you know, unless a right is enumerated - unless it's actually, unless [it] uses the word "privacy" in the Constitution - then no such "constitutional right" exists. Well, I think people have an inherent right.

Again, this is blatantly wrong and unchallenged. Some conservatives reject the right to privacy, but Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito clearly affirmed it in their confirmation hearings in Biden's own committee. Is Biden deliberately lying or is he ignorant?

Couric: Are there Supreme Court decisions you disagree with?

Biden: You know, I'm the guy who wrote the Violence Against Women Act. And I said that every woman in America, if they are beaten and abused by a man, should be able to take that person to court - meaning you should be able to go to federal court and sue in federal court the man who abused you if you can prove that abuse. But they said, "No, that a woman, there's no federal jurisdiction." And I held, they acknowledged, I held about 1,000 hours of hearings proving that there's an effect in interstate commerce.

Here, Couric could have interrupted him, as she interrupted Palin, and asked some questions. There are some terribly important questions that are just begging to be asked. Biden has expressed pride in having written a provision in a statute that, in United States v. Morrison, the Supreme Court held was an exercise of power beyond what is granted to Congress in the Constitution.

Here are some question that could have been asked: Do you think there is any importance to the idea that the Constitution gives Congress limited, enumerated powers? Why isn't it enough that a woman can use state law and sue someone who has physically abused her? Do you think the federal government should pass laws in areas that have been traditionally handled by the states? What standard would you apply to that? Wasn't your law more of a political gesture to please some constituents rather than something that needed to be federalized?

Women who are abused and beaten and beaten are women who are not able to be in the work force. And the Supreme Court said, "Well, there is an impact on commerce, but this is federalizing a private crime and we're not going to allow it." I think the Supreme Court was wrong about that decision.

"Federalizing a private crime"? Huh? Where are the follow up questions?

The unconstitutional provision in the Violence Against Women Act federalized tort law not criminal law. It did not simply authorize federal prosecutors to file cases. Individual plaintiffs could use the federal courts to sue their attackers. Does Biden have any concern about using the federal courts to try cases involving one individual in an act of violence against another individual? Does he know the ratio of state trial level courts to federal district courts in the United States? Why should scarce federal judicial resources be expended on cases like this (as opposed to more complicated interstate matter)?

A person who suffers physical injuries may lose time in the work force, but why does that fact mean that the case belongs in federal rather than state court? Presumably, Biden would say that there was case law stating that Congress has power under the Commerce Clause to pass laws regulating matters that have a substantial effect on interstate commerce, and Biden assumed that if injured women lose time at work, then Congress had power to put individual tort cases arising from acts of violence into the federal courts. Under this theory of the Commerce Clause, which the Supreme Court limited United States v. Morrison, Congress could justify regulating virtually anything.

Why didn't Couric press him on his expansive view of his own power and disregard for the role of the states? Will he bring similar expansive theories of constitutional power to the executive branch?

Absolute deafening silence from Katie Couric. She gave him a free pass. The viewer is invited to sit back and admire Joe Biden as an impressive authority on constitutional law... not like that ignoramus Sarah Palin. Very few viewers will perceive what has been done here.

Sarah Palin was absolutely right to decline to name Supreme Court cases -- other than Roe v. Wade -- that she disagrees with.

There's a lot of mockery of Sarah Palin's performance responding to Katie Couric's questions about Roe v. Wade. (There's a video clip at the link, with a commercial.) Let's read the transcript:

Couric: Why, in your view, is Roe v. Wade a bad decision?

Sarah Palin: I think it should be a states' issue not a federal government-mandated, mandating yes or no on such an important issue. I'm, in that sense, a federalist, where I believe that states should have more say in the laws of their lands and individual areas. Now, foundationally, also, though, it's no secret that I'm pro-life that I believe in a culture of life is very important for this country. Personally that's what I would like to see, um, further embraced by America.

The question was why is Roe v. Wade a bad decision, and as a law professor, I would like to hear an answer about how the decision was badly reasoned, how the Supreme Court had to redo its own work (in Planned Parenthood v. Casey), and so forth, but Palin jumped right to the political effect of the decision and the usual notions about the benefits of federalism.

(Note: Without Roe, Congress would have the opportunity and the incentive to pass laws either limiting, banning, or preserving abortion, so the matter would only be left to the states if Congress exercised restraint or if the Supreme Court managed to limit the commerce power.)

Couric: Do you think there's an inherent right to privacy in the Constitution?

Couric tries to focus Palin on constitutional law. She is also inviting Palin to reject an important category of constitutional rights.

Palin: I do. Yeah, I do.

Palin avoids stepping into a pit there.

Couric: The cornerstone of Roe v. Wade.

Couric seems to suggest that if you believe the Constitution protects the right of privacy, you will need to accept every right that is argued to be an example of that right. That is entirely incorrect. (For example, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected the right to physician-assisted suicide, despite the argument that it fit the right to privacy.)

Palin: I do. And I believe that individual states can best handle what the people within the different constituencies in the 50 states would like to see their will ushered in an issue like that.

Now, that's an example of Palin's garbled syntax. She's also repeating herself and being verbose, but the message I get is that Palin is not going to do any legal analysis, and she's going to stick to the basic Roe v. Wade talking point that abortion should be handled at the state level.

Couric: What other Supreme Court decisions do you disagree with?

This is a clunky question, and it sends up an obvious red flag after the last question. Couric wants to pull Palin into a discussion of constitutional law. Couric let it show that she wants to expose areas of ignorance. Couric would have earned my respect if she had chosen instead to pursue the question of why a right of privacy matters -- why does Palin support it? -- and what makes abortion different. Imagine a serious discussion about that. Instead, I sense that Couric is hungry for mistakes, and Palin's shaky response reveals that she knows she's in danger of making mistakes:

Palin: Well, let's see. There's, of course in the great history of America there have been rulings, that's never going to be absolute consensus by every American. And there are those issues, again, like Roe v. Wade, where I believe are best held on a state level and addressed there. So you know, going through the history of America, there would be others but …

Translation: I'm not going to answer the question, so I'll just repeat myself about how wonderful federalism and add that American history is great.

When you're talking about bad Supreme Court cases, it's not a good time to call American history "great," since the worst decisions entail slavery and segregation, which were, to say the least, not great.

Couric: Can you think of any?

The gotcha is dripping from her lips.

Palin: Well, I could think of … any again, that could be best dealt with on a more local level. Maybe I would take issue with. But, you know, as mayor, and then as governor and even as a vice president, if I'm so privileged to serve, wouldn't be in a position of changing those things but in supporting the law of the land as it reads today.

Now, it would have been better to go back into history -- Palin brought up history -- and name a couple of the notorious cases that everyone acknowledges were bad. I suspect that Palin worried that she might get a case name wrong or that she'd be quizzed about exactly what happened in those cases and that she had a risk-avoidance strategy. Stalling for time, she began to repeat the old federalism point -- "best dealt with on a more local level" -- and then she shifted to a perfectly good excuse for not accepting the invitation to discuss Supreme Court cases: An executive official -- a mayor, governor, or vice president -- should respect the authority of the Supreme Court as it has articulated the meaning of the law.

If Palin had named some current cases -- as opposed to the historical cases that the Court itself has already disavowed -- that she disagrees with she would be claiming greater expertise in legal analysis than the Court itself or, alternatively, she would be saying that the Supreme Court's interpretation of constitutional law is not final.

Either proposition would be difficult to maintain and should not be attempted in an impromptu style in a high-stakes situation. This is the sort of thing a Supreme Court nominee facing confirmation hearings would prepare for intensely and face with trepidation. Palin deserves credit for seeing the situation for what is was and opting out.

It is difficult enough to maintain that one Supreme Court case is wrong, and Roe is that one case. The decision to oppose that case has been carefully thought out and is exceedingly important to Palin and others. (Note: I support abortion rights.) Roe stands apart from everything else because it entails what Palin, I presume, sees as a profound moral wrong: the continuing widespread murder of innocent babies. There are not some additional cases to toss in alongside Roe. The general rule, to which Roe is a unique exception, is that the Supreme Court is the authority on the meaning of constitutional law. And that is exactly what Palin said.

UPDATE: I address Couric's corresponding interview with Joe Biden here.

Sarah Palin on prayer and homosexuality. (And I find a blunder in the CBS transcript.)

From Couric's interview with Sarah Palin:

Couric: Your church sponsored a conference that claimed to be able to convert gays into heterosexuals through prayer. Do you think that gays can be converted, governor?

Palin: Well, you're absolutely wrong, again, on the facts. My church, I don't have a church, I'm not a member of any church. I get to visit a couple of churches in Alaska when I'm home, including one, Wasilla Bible Church, and that's the one that you're talking about.

Couric: Right. I think James Dobson's group … had a convention or a meeting there. And your church…

Palin: No, I think they …

Couric: …supported it.

Palin: The Wasilla Bible Church had a flyer that was part of a bulletin or something …

Couric: But you know what? That doesn't even matter. Let me just ask you the question.

Palin: Well, it matters, though, because, Katie, when the media gets it wrong, it frustrates Americans who are just trying to get the facts and be able to make up their mind on, about a person's values. So it does matter …

Couric: … you're correcting us.

Palin: But you are talking about, I think, a value here, what my position is on homosexuality and can you pray it away 'cause I think that was the title that was listed in that bulletin.

It seems obvious to me that it should have been transcribed: "what my position is on homosexuality and 'Can You Pray It Away?'"

Palin is referring to the title of a program that was listed in a church bulletin. Not transcribing it as a title, in quotes, makes it seem as though she might be expressing an opinion. Indeed, that original transcript flaw seems to have led a copy editor to make it into a much worse blunder.

Look at the CBS article reporting on the interview with excerpts from the interview:

But what you're talking about, I think, value here, what my position is on homosexuality and you can pray it away, because I think that was the title that was listed on that bulletin.

See that? "[M]y position is on homosexuality and you can pray it away...." It's not a question anymore! "Can you" has become "you can," and not presenting it in title form makes it seem as though she might be expressing the opinion you can pray it away.

The video clip with the article does not include that line, so it's very unlikely many readers will notice the way the words got rearranged, and I think many will read that as an initial statement that you can pray homosexuality away.

Back to the original transcript, as she goes on to refuse to say what she thinks about the power of prayer and sexual orientation:

And, you know, I don't know what prayers are worthy of being prayed. And I don't know what prayers are gonna be answered or not answered. But as for homosexuality, I am not going to judge Americans and the decisions that they make in their adult personal relationships. I have, one of my absolute best friends for the last 30 years who happens to be gay. And I love her dearly. And she is not my "gay friend." She is one of my best friends who happens to have made a choice that isn't a choice that I have made. But I am not gonna judge people. And I love America where we are more tolerant than other countries are. And are more accepting of some of these choices that sometimes people want to believe reflects solely on an individual's values or not. Homosexuality, I am not gonna judge people.

This seems to reflect good Christian values. I hear the echo of Jesus's words: "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible" and "Do not judge, or you too will be judged."

Now, Palin does speak of choice: "She is one of my best friends who happens to have made a choice that isn't a choice that I have made." Does that mean she thinks sexual orientation is a choice? It could simply mean that the friend has chosen to act in accordance with her sexual orientation. Oddly, that interpretation would mean -- if we apply logic -- that Palin too has a homosexual orientation. Settle down. Think about it.

If Palin believes sexual orientation is not a choice, then she should have said: "She is one of my best friends who happens to have made a choice that isn't a choice I have had to make." If I were to hold Palin to high linguistic standards, I would conclude that unless Palin is saying that she herself is a lesbian, she is saying that that homosexual orientation -- and not just homosexual behavior -- is a choice.

Specifically, what newspapers and magazines has Sarah Palin been reading?

"All of 'em, any of 'em that have been in front of me over all these years."

Jac is reminded of the time Mr. Lippman interviewed George Costanza a little too searchingly.

"Has the McCain Campaign Broken Sarah Palin?"

Asks Christopher Orr:

[H]er preppers and coddlers and protectors in the campaign [must be giving her the message]: You're not ready. We don't trust you. You have no idea what you're talking about....

When I compare Palin's performance with Gibson to her performance with Couric, the biggest difference I see is confidence.

I don't know if I buy the assumption that it's the McCain campaign's fault. She's been through a lot. She may be running out of emotional resources. A lot of people are trying to destroy her (and her family), using anything they can. Of course, she's got to be tough, and I'm sure she thinks she is. But, my God, she's a human being.